D&D 5E Something to consider about Grognards and the OGL...

[bloodtide]

I get the emotional investment, but I might suggest you have misplaced it a bit. D&D the Game, is just that, a game: some published rules in a book. Just some text on a page.

What you really have the connection to is what you have made with the game: thousands of memories. What you have made from some rules on a page. No one can touch that.

 

[Matt Thomason]

I'm one of the exceptions to this, it seems.

I've been playing RPGs since the early 80s, but D&D was not my first or only RPG in those years, it was just one option. It's always been the one I knew was most well-known, but to me it was still just an option, and I actually feel like I'm disrespecting the many alternatives if I refer to any of those as "D&D".

I'm also generally somewhat pedantic when it comes to how things are referred to. Heck, I even get annoyed that D&D calls them "editions" when what it really has are "versions" because they're so incompatible with one another (Call of Cthulhu has editions, you can generally take stuff from any one of them and drop it into any other one without blinking, with the possible exception of the very latest, and they're just refinements over the previous ones, not written completely from scratch.) I just like to know I'm being accurate in what I call something.

 

[Composer99]

Wizards wants D&D to be a brand, and sure, it might take on the facsimile of one. But D&D isn't a brand - at least, I don't think so. It's a game, a hobby, a community, a way of life, a through-line of continuity despite changes stretching almost fifty years.

Even if D&D-as-commercial-product takes a serious hit as a result of The OGL Affair, even if our sentiment regarding it is spoiled by the behaviour of WotC or by our fellow hobbyists, even if we mourn what we felt about the game as recently as a few weeks ago or as far back as the turn of the century (or longer!) - D&D lives on in our hearts, and I for one hope it always will.

(By we I mean the wider community of D&D hobbyists/gamers writ large. There are those for whom the love of the game has gone, and that's quite all right!)

 

[MGibster]

Yeah but in this debacle, it's twentysomethings (such as the 20-something fella in my group) who are also in the lead of fighting Hasbro's destruction of what they came to love, even if they only played it a few years. The new generations are not down with corporate greed either, or even more so!

 

[Matt Thomason]

Wizards wants D&D to be a brand, and sure, it might take on the facsimile of one. But D&D isn't a brand - at least, I don't think so. It's a game, a hobby, a community, a way of life, a through-line of continuity despite changes stretching almost fifty years.

Even if D&D-as-commercial-product takes a serious hit as a result of The OGL Affair, even if our sentiment regarding it is spoiled by the behaviour of WotC or by our fellow hobbyists, even if we mourn what we felt about the game as recently as a few weeks ago or as far back as the turn of the century (or longer!) - D&D lives on in our hearts, and I for one hope it always will.

(By we I mean the wider community of D&D hobbyists/gamers writ large. There are those for whom the love of the game has gone, and that's quite all right!)

Tycho also touches on this at the end of Ogle - Penny Arcade

For me personally, D&D is not a hobby, any more than Warhammer is, and I feel it's leaning into corporate wishes to consider either of those one. I consider myself an RPG player and a Wargamer, who happens to enjoy various brands of product within those categories. Interestingly though, I do consider D&D to be a culture and a community, even if I don't think of it as a hobby...

 

[Steel_Wind]

Wizards wants D&D to be a brand, and sure, it might take on the facsimile of one. But D&D isn't a brand - at least, I don't think so. It's a game, a hobby, a community, a way of life, a through-line of continuity despite changes stretching almost fifty years.

The term you were looking for is sub-culture.

At WotC the term that has previously been used to describe hardcore gamers is "lifestyle players"

 

[el-remmen]

when what it really has are "versions" because they're so incompatible with one another

I never get when people say this. My groups have always mixed and matched stuff through all the editions.

 

[Matt Thomason]

I never get when people say this. My groups have always mixed and matched stuff through all the editions.

A 2e class makes very little sense if you drop it into a 4e game. A monster statblock might sorta-work, but will certainly require some converting. XP values likely don't work at all.

1e/2e and to a degree BECMI, they were similar enough you could do that, but beyond requires various levels of conversion as entirely new concepts are introduced or removed (where'd my THAC0 go? Wait, are ACs back to front now? What the heck is a challenge rating? What do you mean by Encounter/Daily/Utility spells?)

 

[cbwjm]

Opinions vary. 3E felt a hell of a lot more like D&D than late 2E did to me.

I think the only edition of DnD that didn't quite feel like DnD to me was 4e. I still thought it had some great stuff but it just didn't feel right. Meanwhile, pathfinder (both editions), ACKS, all other editions, WoW d20, Conan d20, Astonishing swordsmen and sorcerers of Hyperborea, and likely a host more, all felt like DnD.

 

[ScYork]

Personally. I like all the D&D versions/iterations. The basic underlying frame work of the game is there throughout thr editions but the tweaks to the rules bring a different flavor to the game. Our group has been playing modules from all the different editions, we've played 1E 5E, 3.5E, we are now moving to 2E and we've played Pathinder 2E as well. I'm enjoying playing all the differences between the editions...but to me it's still all D&D, because the underlying substructure to the various versions remains the same...its all still cake with just different icing!